Playing your part

I'll save the big philosophical discussion of all the roles we play in life (mother, daughter, wife, director, friend) for another day.
Today I'm talking more about the emotional roles we seem to trade around in our family. My husband is the worrier. I don't usually have to anticipate what might go wrong or stay up waiting for our teens to get home because he does those things so much better than I ever could, but if he doesn't take the job on for some reason, I fill the gap. This would be why he's snoring right now while I await our daughter's return from a concert. I'm the interpreter. I explain possible positive motives of daughter to father and back again, and I'm far too frequently the arbitrator, finding compromises between the same two people. Yes, she should be allowed to go to Europe with friends when she is 17 and a half and yes she should understand when he cross examines her about same proposed trip.
I'm the comic relief and sometimes the scapegoat. He's the organizer. I am perfectly capable of packing a suitcase. At work, I'm the one who spends far too long getting the books to fit just right in the booksale box, but at home he's the one who packs the trunk.
I'm the grand schemer, full of ideas and enthusiasm. He's the reality check but he has also been known to find a way to get it done. I'm the traveler, always ready to go adventuring. He is the steady light shining in the window so we can always find our way back home.
There was no real point to this one, just something I was thinking about while waiting for the return of the prodigal daughter.